The Influence Of Social Trust And Organizational Support On Households’ Participating In Governance Performance Of Irrigation Systems

Effective governance of irrigation systems is an important way to strengthen agricultural material technology and equipment and enhance the sustainable development of agriculture.However,in reality,many irrigation systems have not fully achieved their operational goals.The important reason for these phenomenas is that they fail to properly address the governance of irrigation systems.To solve these problems,the key lies in the participation of irrigators,that is,the participation of households in the governance of irrigation systems.However,at present,the enthusiasm of households to participate in governance is not high.This is because the conflicts between the public product characteristics of irrigation systems and the nature of private products produced by households,and the imperfect management mechanism and unclear maintenance responsibilities.Also,the self-governing dilemma of irrigation system,the rationality of individual farmers will induce the irrationality of the village collective,which will lead to the households’ participation in the irrigation systems’ governance performance is difficult to reach the optimal level,and the space for improvement can be greatly suppressed.Social trust and organizational support provide a new path to improve governance performance.Social trust determines the households’ motivation to participate in irrigation system governance.It also affects the establishment of households’ intrinsic constraint mechanism in the process of participating in the governance of irrigation systems.Organizational support limits the dependence and persistence of households’ participation in irrigation system governance.It also restricts the achievement of the mutual psychological contract and the formation of effective cooperative behavior.Therefore,it is of great theoretical and practical significance to introduce social trust and organizational support into the the research of households’ particitiaon in irrigation systems governance.Based on the dual perspectives of social trust and organizational support,the theoretical basis of this research is the multi-dimensional theory of common pool resources theory,collective action theory,social capital theory and social exchange theory.This research systematically combs the domestic and foreign literature.Firstly,this study analyzes the current situation of households participating in irrigation system governance using 772 micro-farm households in Inner Mongolia and Ningxia.Secondly,based on the construction of social trust and organizational support index system,factor analysis was used to measure their indicators.Thirdly,this study analyzed the impact of social trust and organizational support on the direct performance,indirect performance and final performance of irrigation systems’ governance using ordered probit regression,structural equation modeling and quantile regression.Finally,based on the above analysis,the study puts forward the policy recommendations for households to participate in the governance of irrigation systems,and provides theoretical support and realistic basis for the institutional innovation of irrigation systems governance in China.The conclusions of this study are as follows:(1)The governance performance of households’ participation in irrigation systems are characterized by the degree of maintenance of irrigation facilities,the supply of irrigation water,and the level of agricultural output.Among them,the maintenance of irrigation facilities is relatively good.In the irrigation water supply situation,the irrigation water supply is the most sufficiency,the irrigation water distribution fairness is close behind,and the irrigation water supply is the least reliable.In the agricultural output level,the output per hectare of food crops is 7,856.341 kg,and the output is high.Among them,the number of farmers growing grain crops in Inner Mongolia is small,but the grain output is not much different from that in Ningxia.The yield per hectare of cash crops is 13,558.320 kg,which is much higher than the output level of food crops.Among them,the number of households growing economic crops in Inner Mongolia is large,but the yield per mu is relatively lower than that in Ningxia.(2)The index system of social trust includes the households’ interpersonal trust to their relatives,neighbors,and non-neighbor villagers,as well as the institutional trust to the village cadres and the management and maintenance system.In interpersonal trust,households have the highest degree of trust in their relatives,which shows that relatives are still the main body of households’ trust.Secondly,households trust their neighbors higher than non-neighbor villagers,indicating that the neighbors are still the main group of housholds communicate and trust in the village.In the institutional trust,the trust degree of households to village cadres is higher than to the system of management and maintenance.This may be related to the imperfect management system at the village level.The governance of the irrigation systems mainly depends on the leadership ability of the village cadres.(3)The indicator system of organizational support includes the emotional support of the village to repect,help and pay attention to households,as well as the physical support of providing irrigation facilities,personnel and information to households.In emotional support,households have the highest degree of perception on the respect given by village organizations when they use irrigation facilities.After that,the higher perception by households is the care and help given by village organizaitons in irrigation,while the value of the contribution made by village organiztions to housholds in the governance is th lowest perceived degree by households.In the tool support,the irrigation information provided by the village organization to the households obtained the highest degree of perception of the households,and the households also had a higher degree of perception of the irrigation facilities and personnel support provided by the village organization.(4)Based on the IAD framework,this study analyzed the impact of social trust and organizational support on the direct performance of households’ participation in irrigation systems governance using the ordered probit model.The results show that social trust and organizational support have significant positive effects on the direct performance of households’ participation in irrigation systems governance.This conclusion is still valid when the elderly samples are removed and other variables are used to characterize social trust and organizational support,indicating that the analysis results are more robust.Moreover,by using hierarchical regression method and according to the criterion of intermediary variable,it is proved that social trust plays a part of intermediary role in the process of organizational support influencing the direct performance of households’ participation in irrigation systems governance.In addition,the gender,health status of the farmers,whether there are village cadres in households,the area of irrigable arable land,the importance of irrigation system to income increase,the degree of transparency in the use of custody fundsthe and the interpersonal relationship had a positive impact on direct performance.However,the cognition of households on the price of irrigation water and the number of households sharing one major irrigation facilities had negative influence on the maintenance of irrigation facility.(5)Considering the difference of agricultural income level,this study used the multi-group structural equation model to analyze the influence of social trust and organizational support on the indirect performance of households’ participation in irrigation system governance.The results show that social trust and organizational support have a positive impact on households’ participation behavior and indirect performance in the governance of irrigation systems.Moreover,organizational support has a positive impact on social trust.In terms of the total effect,the variable with the greatest impact on the indirect governance performance is organizational support,followed by the households’ participation in the governance of irrigation systems,while social trust has the least impact on the indirect governance performance.Then,this study took the agricultural income level of households as a multigroup analysis adjustment variable.The results showed that the social trust of high-agricultural income households had the most significant impact on the indirect performance of households’ participation in the governance of irrigation system.The impact of organizational support received by households with low agricultural income had the most signigicant impact on indirect performance.Also,the organizational support received by low-income households has the most significant impact on their social trust.(6)This study analyzed the impact of social trust and organizational support on the final performance of households’ participation in irrigation system governance using ordinary least squares regression and quantile regression.For grain crops,the results show that househols’ social trust has a positive effect on the yield per unit area of grain crops and the elastic coefficient is generally reduced with the increase of the number of points.The organizational support perceived by households has a positive effect on the yield per unit area of grain crops,and the elastic coefficient is generally reduced with the increase of the number of points.For cash crops,households’ social trust has a positive effect on the yield per unit area of cash crops,and with the increase of the number of points,the elastic coefficient generally shows the characteristics of first falling and then rising.Organizational support has a positive effect on the yield per unit area of cash crop,and the elastic coefficient increases gradually with the increase of the number of points.